Three's Family
by A Frumious Bandersnatch
Summary: AUish sisfic She can bong a beer in fifteen seconds and burp at a hundred decibels. Sam thought wryly. Ladies and gentlemen, my sister. The poster child for what happens when you raise a girl in a testosterone-laden environment.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Ah yes, the sister-fic of oft-disputed popularity. Some people like it. Some people hate it. I've never found one where I'm fully satisfied with the integration of the sister in the main story-line. She always seemed like nothing more than an observer while Sam and Dean got the lion's share of everything. So the plot bunny sunk its teeth into my leg until I wrote this humble offering. Please let me know what you think of this interpretation. One-shot.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

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><p><span>Three's Family<span>

When the window lock was jimmied open, Sam knew they had a problem. He rolled out of bed without disturbing Jess and padded silently down the hall to the main room of the apartment.

There had been -_-_ someone casing the apartment building all day. They vanished whenever he tried to get a glimpse of them, but they always stayed close enough to set his instincts off. You could take the Hunter out of the hunt, but the hunt would never leave the Hunter.

Case in point, Sam himself. Though he was living a delicious apple pie life with a ten-year plan and a girlfriend far away from anything that might have found his liver tasty, there were still protective charms (cleverly disguised as wind chimes) and thin, barely-there lines of salt at the windows and door.

It must have been a bog-standard cat burglar, to make it past the protective measures. That was something Sam could handle. He darted to the end of the hall, just outside the beaded curtain, just in time to see a shadowed human shape walk confidently across the creaky wooden floor. He wasn't sure what alarmed him more. The fact that the man walked like he owned the place or the fact he didn't make the floor creak in the slightest.

_Or maybe not so bog-standard._

He lunged through the beaded curtain and grabbed the intruder by the shoulder. What he intended to do next was instantly waylaid by the strike that the intruder aimed at him, forcing him to duck. He grabbed Sam's arm and swung him around dizzyingly, knocking him off balance and several feet across the floor. Sam regained his balance and kicked back, only to be blocked and subsequently shoved into the kitchen.

The light was a little better in here. The curtains were pulled, but yellow streetlight filtered through the cracks and Sam caught his first glimpse of the intruder's face. He had just enough time to wonder if he'd seen it before when an elbow came flying at his face and struck his jaw. Wincing, but with no time to lose, Sam reared back and aimed another kick. But the intruder ducked under the outstretched leg and tackled him while he was still standing on one leg. They both hit the floor hard, Sam on the bottom with a hand at his neck.

"Whoa, easy, tiger." the intruder said before Sam could think to retaliate.

"Dean?" Sam asked through huffing breaths, peering through the gloom. Yep, spiky hair. Amulet dangling from the leather cord at his neck. Smirky grin. Definitely his brother. "You scared the crap out of me!"

"That's 'cause you're outta practice." Dean told him in that 'I am your big brother and I am superior' way that always bugged him.

_Out of practice, am I?_

To prove him wrong, Sam promptly flipped him. Dean hit the floor with his thud, his (_heavy!_) little brother sitting on his chest.

"Or not." he conceded. He tapped Sam's leg twice. "Get offa me."

Sam rolled off his brother and helped him to his feet.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Well, I was looking for a beer."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Okay. All right. We gotta talk."

"Uh, the phone?"

"If I'd'a called, would you have picked up?"

"Sam?"

The kitchen light flipped on and the brothers looked in unison. Jess had woken up, disturbed by the sound of fighting. She only had a second to take in the sight of her boyfriend standing in the kitchen with a stranger when there was a knock at the door. Sam glanced at his confused girlfriend apologetically, then at his brother with some venom and then at the innocent door and had a sinking feeling that he was about to be double-teamed.

"Better get that." Dean suggested, a knowing smile on his face.

The sinking feeling in his stomach threatened to take his spleen and pancreas and possibly his liver down with it. Sam hastened to unlock the door and opened it, very unsurprised to find his older sister standing on the front step. If Dean was around, then she was never far behind.

"Hi Sam." Elizabeth said. "I decided to come in through the door. 'Cause that's what civilized people do. They let themselves in through the door."

Her eyes drifted to Dean as she said this, insinuating that he wasn't a civilized person because he had used the window as the method of entry when it was most common to use the door.

"Oh, it's you." Sam groaned.

"'Oh, it's you'." Elizabeth repeated with perfect inflection, scowling. "Is that all I get?"

"Sam." Jess repeated, sounding a tad cross. "What's going on?"

_Who are these people breaking into our apartment after midnight?_

The Hunter-turned-college-student stepped away to let his sister inside and turned to his girlfriend, hoping this wouldn't end with him on the couch.

"Jess, this is Elizabeth and Dean." he said, gesturing to each one in turn. "Guys, this is my girlfriend, Jessica."

Dean gave a very appreciative smile, as Jess was wearing a cropped top and a pair of particularly small shorts. Elizabeth leaned on the wall behind her and waved.

"Wait, Dean and Elizabeth as in your brother and sister?" Jess asked for clarification. Sam spoke rarely of his family. Every word he said about them didn't come without a fight. Jess knew that his mother was dead and his father was a former Marine. She knew that he wasn't on good terms with his father. She knew that he had two older siblings, a brother and a sister, but she knew them more as these vague, effervescent figures who drifted around the edges of Sam's conscious mind, never really taking shape.

Now, there really wasn't any doubt that Jess was staring at the missing pieces of Sam's family. Dean looked like Sam and Elizabeth looked like their mother.

"It's nice to meet you." Jess said. Just because they had come barging in during the middle of the night was no excuse to forego manners.

"Good-_-_" Elizabeth checked her watch. "Morning."

Dean's eyes drifted off Jess's face and down to her chest.

"Oh, I love the Smurfs." he said, his voice just oozing charm. "You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother's league."

Jess smiled uncertainly and glanced at Sam, like she was hoping she would make the man go away.

"Oh god, you are uncivilized." Elizabeth muttered from behind Sam, rolling her eyes.

"Says who?" Dean challenged.

"Me. We haven't been here for five minutes and you're leering at your own brother's girlfriend." Elizabeth pointed out. "And you came in through the window." she added like this was a serious breach of Winchester Decorum.

"What's wrong with the window?"

"Nothing's wrong with the window. You're the problem." She cleared her throat, hunched her shoulders and effected a deep, gravelly voice. "Me Dean. Me don't know what doorknob does 'cause me caveman. Me climb through window that get stuck and flirt with brother's girlfriend. Me do that 'cause caveman not civilized."

She finished off her mockery by thumping a fist off her chest.

"Stop bitching, Lizard-breath." Dean said, trying to scowl simultaneously at his sister and his brother, the latter of whom was sniggering. "You're the one who was all proud of the fact you once went two months without showering."

"I didn't have a choice. There were certain, unavoidable circumstances and I went straight to shower right after." Elizabeth reminded him. "The difference between you and me, beside the obvious gender dimorphism stuff, is this. Three words."

She made a sort of swallowing noise and-_-_

**BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPP!**

The burp was long, loud, and immensely satisfying, judging from the sated smile.

"Excuse me." she said sweetly.

Dean scowled. Round god-only-knows-what: Lost.

_She can bong a beer in fifteen seconds and burp at a hundred decibels._ Sam thought wryly. _Ladies and gentlemen, my sister. The poster child for what happens when you raise a girl in a testosterone-laden environment._

"Just let me put something on." Jess said, clearly uncomfortable with Dean's appreciation for the Smurfs.

"No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously." the older brother said quickly. "We're not sticking around, though. We gotta borrow your boyfriend here. Talk about some private family business. But, uh, nice meeting you."

"No." Sam broke away from his brother and walked over to Jess, pointedly putting an arm around her. He looked stonily at Dean, who had taken an aborted step after him, and Elizabeth, who hadn't moved away from the wall. Where did they got off showing up in the middle of the night, pretending it was easy to pick up right where they had left off?

"No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her." Sam told them firmly.

Then Dean did something he had never actually done before. He looked at Elizabeth for guidance.

That alone made Sam wonder if it wasn't something serious. If there was one thing his brother hardly ever did, it was expect his younger siblings to give him advice on how to proceed. He always knew what he was doing and how he was going to do it and he didn't need anyone else suggesting another course of action unless shit had already hit the fan.

Either that, or he was expecting Elizabeth to speak up. But she didn't. She waved a hand, indicating that the ball was in his court and she was just going to stay back here where she could keep an eye on things.

"Okay." Dean squared at his shoulders and looked at the couple straight on. "Um. Dad hasn't been home in a few days."

"So he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift." Sam shrugged, uncaring. Dad drunk off his ass? Nothing new. "He'll stumble back in sooner or later."

Dean ducked his head briefly, re-thinking his words, and then looked back up.

"Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days."

Sam's expression didn't falter, but something in his posture changed, tightened. Pressed to his side as she was, Jess felt it and she looked up at her boyfriend in confusion.

"Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside."

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	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** So apparently the plot-bunny wasn't done with me yet. It sat on my shoulder and chittered incessantly. Here I present the next bit, continuing with the pilot episode. I'll probably just go ahead and do the whole damn episode. After that, we'll see.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

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><p><span>Three's Family<span>

"You can't do this." Sam said firmly, practically chasing his siblings down the stairs, more appropriately dressed for the weather outside.

"Do what?" they asked in stereo.

"This." Sam gestured at them. "You can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you."

"Don't look at me." Elizabeth held her hands up quickly, jerking a finger at Dean. "His idea. All his."

"I didn't hear you saying 'no', Liz." Dean told her. "This isn't about hitting road for fun, Sammy. Dad's missing. We need you to help us find him. We're at a dead end here."

"You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton?" Sam wondered, pulling the first memories that came to mind. "He was missing then, too. He's always missing, and he's always _fine_."

The procession stopped halfway done the staircase. Dean's shoulders were quivering with a newfound tension and he turned to his younger brother with a look like he wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words.

"Well, not this time, Sammy." Elizabeth said from the landing five steps down. "It's different. He's just-_-_ gone. Poof. Into thin air."

"She's right. He's never been missing for this long. Now are you gonna come with us or not?" Dean questioned gruffly.

"I'll let you have the front seat." Elizabeth offered. Back before Stanford, she had given up in the coveted position of the front seat in deference to Sam's growing legs, but in his absence, she had taken it back. Apparently, she considered returning the front seat to him as some kind of peace offering.

"I'm not coming." Sam said.

"Not even for the front seat?" Elizabeth asked.

"I'm not coming with you." Sam said in a loud, slow voice so they could understand him better.

"Why not?" Dean asked, confused and a touch angry.

"I swore I was done hunting. For good." Sam said firmly.

"Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad." Dean pointed out, starting down the stairs again. Ahead of him, Elizabeth darted down the next flight. Sam followed them determinedly.

"Yeah? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45." he said.

"Well, what was he supposed to do?"

"I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, 'don't be afraid of the dark'."

"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there!"

"Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her." Sam muttered bitterly. "But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find."

"We save a lot of people doing it, too." Dean said.

"So it's worth it." Elizabeth said softly.

"You think Mom would have wanted this for us?" Sam asked. He doubted that she would ever want her children to live from pool hall to pool hall, risking their lives on a regular basis. He was certain that Dean was supposed to be a stellar mechanic who repaired classics and had a steady girlfriend. Elizabeth was supposed to be an accomplished dancer, though he couldn't imagine her with a boyfriend. And Sam would marry Jess and have a bunch of geeky little lawyer babies.

As if seeing the apple pie life dancing around in his brother's mind, Dean rolled his eyes and slammed the door open, stalking out in a fit of temper.

"What's wrong with him?" Sam wondered.

"What's wrong with you?" Elizabeth returned.

"Lizzy-_-_" Sam started, but his older sister waved a hand.

"No. I forgive you for running away. But whatever your beef is with Dean, hash it out with him. Not me." Elizabeth instructed. "I'm not playing mediator, because every time I do, I feel like I'm a step away from committing fratricide."

She turned on her wheel and followed her older brother out the door, giving it a shove to relieve her unhappy feelings. Sam groaned -_-_ boy, he was just having bad luck tonight -_-_ and trailed after his siblings. Dean was already halfway to the Impala. The sight of the old black classic gave Sam a pleasant swell of nostalgia, but it was tainted by the definitely bittersweet flavor of this impromptu family reunion.

"Don't tell me it never bothered you, Liz." He called after his sister. "The weapon training and melting the silver into bullets? Hand-to-hand combat? Dad ragging on us whenever we lost a sparring match? Man, we were raised like warriors. No room for mistakes."

"And check out mah guns!" Elizabeth said mockingly, flexing her arms. "I can hit twelve bullseyes in a minute. How many girls can say that?"

"You shouldn't have to say that." Sam said, crossing his arms. "Remember? It was three months before Dad figured out why you were losing every single sparring match even when you did it right. This doesn't have to be your life."

"And what **is** going to be her life?" Dean asked roughly. "The normal apple pie thing that you got going on? You're gonna make us live that? Is that it? Normal life?"

"No. Not normal. Safe." Sam corrected.

"And that's why you ran away." Dean concluded scornfully, looking away.

"I was just going to college." Sam reminded them with the air of someone who had said this a lot. "It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."

"You're obeying Dad for once?" Elizabeth inquired. "'Cause that's what it sounds like to me. You're actually doing what he says."

"Well, it's the one order of Dad's I can live with." Sam said.

Very pointedly, Elizabeth stepped out of the middle and went to lean against the Impala beside Dean, presenting a united front. Against Sam. He should have been used to that. Elizabeth had found out about the hunting business early on, five years before Sam had. After that, she and Dean had collaborated to keep their little brother in the dark. If they'd had their way, Sam might have never found out that the thing under his bed was real.

"Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now -_-_ if he's not dead already. I can feel it." Dean said.

Sam didn't reply.

"We can't do this alone."

"Yes you can." Sam said.

"We could, but we discussed it." Dean said, pointing between himself and Elizabeth. "We don't want to."

Sam sighed, unsure if he wanted to go with them. It was tempting to just turn around and go back inside to Jess. He hadn't spoken to Dean in over two years. He hadn't spoke to Elizabeth either, because of her wonderful habit of destroying her cell phones on hunts. If he had wanted to talk to her, he'd have to try and get through his father or his brother first. The trouble wouldn't have made it worth it.

But why would they come running to him in the middle of the night, looking for his help.

_Because they're scared._ suggested a little voice in the back of his mind. _Dad's gone missing. It's got them rattled._

That was silly. Dean was a powerhouse at six-foot even, exuding a force field of "Do not fuck with me" out in a ten-foot radius. He had once killed a skin-shifter with a silver candlestick. Elizabeth was five feet and ten inches of sinewy muscle and one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, but had sent men twice her size flying down a bar counter. What was there for them to be scared of?

_Of Dad not coming back._ said that little voice. _Admit it. That scares you too._

Sam shook his head, conceding defeat and ignoring his siblings' triumphant expressions.

"What was he hunting?"

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	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** I like this chapter. The sister-character is starting to come together a little bit. We find out a few things about her.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

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><p><span>Three's Family<span>

"Liz!" Dean squawked like a parrot when he opened the weapon's compartment. "Stop organizing the weapons!"

Sam couldn't stop himself from grinning. Handguns were neatly sequestered in one area, full rifles in another, sawed-offs in yet another. The knives were organized according to length under their Velcro straps. The various other odds-and-ends they used in the business were separated by function: rock salt with rock salt, boxes of shotgun shells stacked atop one another, bottles of holy water, consecrated bullets. All so neatly organized it might have been a picture in a Martha Stewart magazine. If Martha Stewart ever ran an article on the hunting lifestyle.

"This is why you need to come back, Sammy." Dean said, pointing to the not-chaos of the weapon's compartment. "I don't complain when she takes a vacuum to my baby, but when she starts making a motel bed... She hangs her wet towels up. And then I find my clothes folded. _Folded_, Sam!"

"Wow. Neatness and order. Must be just awful." Sam said brightly, enjoying his brother's flustered-ness.

The on-the-road lifestyle demanded some degree of organization (or rather, the ability to cram everything you owned into a single duffel bag). Elizabeth was downright anal about it. Maybe it was some inborn nesting instinct, exasperated by the fact that she was the only girl among three guys who didn't always pick up after themselves.

John left his clothes on the floor before he went to bed. Dean made a mess of the bathroom when he showered. Sam could strew the contents of his duffel across the motel room without intending to.

And Elizabeth was the only Winchester who would clean up.

One time, in the middle of the night, she had taken every single piece of clothing they owned (save for what they were wearing) and somehow managed to transfer it all to the motel roof. She had even strung their underwear up the nearest flagpole. John had made her run two miles in the wet for that, but she claimed that it had been quite worth it.

She didn't do something like that again, but Sam at least had started keeping better track of his belongings. Dean got wet towels shoved under his blankets at night and John would never be able find his pants come morning.

The other problem was that when Elizabeth got bored, she cleaned, straightened and organized things that didn't need to be cleaned, straightened or organized. Hence why the weapons compartment was in its current state.

"Great! I can't find anything now!" Dean grumped, rummaging through the 'utility side' of the compartment. "Liz, where the hell did you put the thingy?"

"Right here." Elizabeth emerged from the passenger side. "And it's not a thingy. It's a digital recorder."

"So when Dad left, why didn't either of you go with him?" Sam asked.

"We were workin' our own gigs." Dean replied. "I had this, uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans."

"Water cryptid in San Fransisco Bay. Dad dropped me off along the way." Elizabeth said, shrugging. "Last I saw of him."

"Dad let you two go on hunting trips by yourselves?" Sam was surprised by that. Never hunt alone. One rule in the Winchester Guide to Hunting the Supernatural.

"I'm twenty-six, dude." Dean said, affronted by the very idea that he couldn't handle a hunt by himself. "And Lizard here is a big girl. Who completely messed up my system of organization. Where is the-_-_"

Elizabeth thrust a folder at him. It had fluffy kittens on it.

"The fluffy kitten folder." Sam observed. "Is it that bad?"

"Not bad enough for the fluffy kitten folder." Dean replied. "It's more like baby seal folder material."

"I left the baby seal folder in Dad's truck. Besides, I didn't think it merited the rainbow unicorn folder." Elizabeth explained.

"What about the floppy bunny folder?" Sam asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. "It's worse than the floppy bunny folder." she said. "It **is** supposed to be in the baby seal folder, but since I don't have that, the fluffy kitten folder is the next level of 'oh shit'."

"You and your folders." Dean grumbled. "All right, here we go." He pulled some papers out of the fluffy kitten folder. "So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy... They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA."

The paper he had handed to Sam was a printout of an article from the Jericho Herald, headlined "Centennial Highway Disappearance". It was dated over two months ago and detailed the disappearance of Andrew Carey. Sam skimmed through the article.

"So maybe he was kidnapped."

"Yeah. Well, here's another one in April." Dean tossed down another article from the Jericho Herald. "Another one in December 'oh-four, 'oh-three, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two. Ten of them over the past twenty years. All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road."

He took the papers back from Sam and stuffed them back in the folder. Elizabeth immediately took it from him and began rearranging the papers into the previous order she'd had them in.

"It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him since." Dean finished.

"Liz, you were with Dad just before he went to Jericho." Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's been three weeks for me too." Elizabeth said. "The water bitch only took me a week. Dad said he'd be able to pick me up then and he never showed. I met up with Dean only this morning."

"She had to call me from a payphone." Dean said, like a payphone was an insult.

"Cell's somewhere on the bottom of the Bay, I think." Elizabeth admitted.

"Dad taking off without us is nothing new." Sam muttered. How many times had they been left in the dust while he went off on a hunt?

"Yeah, but him going missing is bad enough." Dean said. "Then I get this voicemail yesterday."

That was where the recorder came in. The message on it was laced with static and breaking up, but their father's voice was still coherent and audible.

"_Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. Look out for your sister. We're all in danger._"

"You know there's EVP on that?" Sam observed.

"Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?" Dean quipped, grinning.

Sam shook his head. Nope, some part of him would never stop being a Hunter.

"All right. We slowed the message down, ran it through a gold wave and took out the hiss. This is what we got." Elizabeth took the recorder from Dean. She pressed play.

"_I can never go home..._" hissed the mournful voice of a woman.

"Never go home." Sam repeated.

"Depressing little shit, ain't she?" Elizabeth grinned.

She tossed the recorder back into the weapon's compartment and in a performance that looked choreographed, Dean pulled down the supporting shotgun and lowered the lid of the compartment, allowing Elizabeth to shut the trunk. That accomplished, Dean leaned on the Impala, arms crossed.

"You know, in almost two years we've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing." he said.

Elizabeth didn't say anything. Sam almost wished that she would. But as far as she was concerned, all this friction was between her brothers and she had little, if anything at all, to do with it. And Dean... Well, Dean was as stubborn as a Winchester came. Maybe a little extra stubborn, when it came to his siblings.

Dad had given Dean an order, in that voice-mail. He had told Dean to look after his sister, which really translated into "look after your siblings". That was what Dean had spent his entire life doing. Whether it was wailing on a bully who thought it would be fun to pick on Sam or willingly holding Elizabeth's hair back from her face when she had to vomit, he looked after them.

Dad had said they were all in danger. When it came to the hunt, he was hardly ever wrong. If he said it, then it had to be true. Dean had not come here just because he wanted Sam's help. He came come to check on his baby brother; keep an eye on him until this danger had passed. There would be no getting rid of him until then. Sam wouldn't be able to get back to his apple-pie life (with a flaky crust) until then.

"All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him." Sam said. "But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here."

He started to go back to the door, but Dean's voice made him pause.

"What's first thing Monday?"

"I have this...I have an interview." Sam told him.

"What, a job interview? Skip it." Dean said flippantly.

"It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate." Sam said firmly. There was no fucking way he was going to pass up this opportunity. He had worked too hard for too long to let it fly by.

"Law school?" Dean smirked and threw it at Elizabeth.

"Hey, having a bad-ass lawyer in the family might not hurt." she said. "Would have helped back in Tallahassee."

"What happened in Tallahassee?" Sam wondered. He shrewdly suspected that Dean had romanced the wrong woman.

"Nothing happened in Tallahassee." the older brother said quickly. "Tallahassee was incident-free. Whole lotta nothing. We're never going to Tallahassee again. Nothing happens there. Nothing happened there."

"And I definitely did not break him outta jail." Elizabeth declared.

Sam shook his head. Probably didn't want to know about Tallahassee.

"Look, we got a deal or not?"

It occurred to him later (much later, when the fire engines were pulling away from his hollowed-out apartment) that the fact that they didn't say anything was in its own way almost prophetic.

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	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Here's more. Enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

* * *

><p><span>Three's Family<span>

They pulled into a gas station a little after dawn. Sam was dozing, but he jerked awake when Dean eased on the brakes.

"We there?" Sam asked, peering blearily at their surroundings, trying to get a bead on where they were.

"Nope, just need to get some gas." Dean said. His stomach growled. "And food, man. I'm starving."

Sam stared almost zombie-like at the attached mini-mart before it clicked in his brain what was going on. Food, gas, and a pit stop. Life on the road. It was brilliant.

"Yeah, just keep the windows rolled down." he said.

"Hey, it's not my intestines that get all jumpy at the slightest sign of carbohydrates." Dean pointed out defensively. He reached into the back seat. "Liz!"

"Hrrk-_-_ Wh't?..." Elizabeth practically jumped out of the seat, looking around for whatever had startled her awake. She had managed to fall asleep in the back seat, a talent neither of her brothers had perfected (unless they were unconscious), if only because they didn't fit anymore.

"Where're we?..." she asked, her voice still scratchy from her short nap.

"'Bout half an hour outside of Jericho. Stopped for gas and food." Dean replied, opening the door as he did. "And you need to do something about your hair."

"What 'bout my hair?" Elizabeth raised a hand to her tangled blonde mop and dragged the tips of her fingers through it, finding tangles and snarls. "Oh..."

"No sister of mine isn't going to not look sexy." Dean informed her, then got out of the car. Elizabeth blinked after him and turned still blurry-looking eyes at Sam with the shared exasperation that all younger siblings had towards their older siblings.

"Yes... Winchesters must look pretty..." Elizabeth muttered dryly. "Where's my hair clip?..."

"In your bag." Sam replied, opening the door to stretch his legs. They had been in the car maybe two hours and his muscles were already complaining. He had forgotten how cramped the foot-well of the Impala could get. Old, classic cars hadn't really been designed for people of Sam's long-legged stature.

"Where's my bag?..." Elizabeth wondered, staring at floor as if expecting the bag to magically appear.

"Don't you usually put it under the seat?" Sam suggested. "Unless you decided to stuff it in the glove box this time."

Elizabeth blinked in bewilderment at her younger brother, as if he had made a joke that she just didn't get. Then she ducked down behind the bench seat to check underneath. Leaving her to that, Sam got out of the car to make use of the facilities. He may have been out of the game for four years, but he still remembered one of the key rules for living on the road. Take advantage of every toilet you came across, because the alternative was a bush by the side of the road.

Dean had left the pump running and was inside the mini-mart, scouring the collection of very fast food for something hopefully edible. He turned at the second jingle of the bell and shouted:

"Liz! How 'bout a breakfast burrito!"

"You'd better be fucking joking!" Elizabeth retorted.

Sam laughed and hurried into the relative safety of the men's restroom before his sister could turn the Death Glare on him. The Legend of the Dodgy Gas Station Breakfast Burrito would live on forever. Eight years later and she still wouldn't touch those things with a ten-foot pole.

Dean was still mulling over decisions and Elizabeth was dealing with her hair when Sam had washed his hands and went to sit back in the car. Hmm, his first Hunt in four years and it was starting off practically the same way it always did. Looking for a cheap bite to eat. It felt weird, he realized, to sit in the car and _know_ that some butt-ugly supernatural fucker was about to get torched. And knowing that he was going to have a hand in for the first time in four years. He had sworn off Hunting all during college. Dropped tips with Bobby if something turned up nearby, but he didn't take care of it himself. He was out of the game and he had been planning to stay that way.

He _was_ going to stay that way. There was nothing resembling an "if" in there anywhere. He was just going to make sure that Dad was okay, make extra-sure that Dean and Elizabeth didn't need anything else from him, and then he was going to own that interview. He was going to live normal with Jess, get the white-picket fence and have two point five kids and a dog. End of story.

His heel bumped into a cardboard box that Elizabeth must have pushed out during the search for her bag. Sam pulled the box all the way out from under the seat and opened the lid, grinning when he saw the contents.

Cassette tapes.

Some still with their original art. Others hand-labeled. ZZ Top. Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Rolling Stones. Iron Butterfly.

Classic music for the classic car.

Dean wouldn't have it any other way.

"Hey!"

Speaking of Dean...

"You want breakfast?" he asked, holding up items of food for Sam's inspection. Or at least something that was masquerading as food. In reality, it was just fat and carbohydrates hammered into the shape of food.

"No, thanks." Sam turned the offer down and felt wise for doing so, even when Dean gave him a 'your loss' look. "So how'd you pay for that stuff? You guys still running credit card scams?"

"Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career." Dean reminded, working the nozzle out of the tank. He put it back on the pump as Elizabeth emerged from the mini-mart, groomed and awake, her hair clipped back like usual.

"Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards." Dean said by way of justification. "Right, Liz?"

"What?" Elizabeth blinked. Okay, maybe not completely awake.

"Us. Credit cards. Scams." Dean elaborated.

Elizabeth blinked again. "Whatever you say. Is that mine?" She pointed to the package of powdered donuts and the iced tea sitting on the Impala's trunk. Dean handed the items to her with a warning about crumbs and she slid into the back of the Impala.

"Yeah..." Sam shook his head and swung his legs back into the car, pulling the door closed. "And what names did you write on the application this time?"

"Uh, Burt Aframian." Dean replied, sitting down and emptying his pockets of chips and soda. "Plus his son Hector and his daughter Maureen. Scored three cards out of the deal."

"That sounds about right." Sam looked down at the box in his lap. "I swear, man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection."

"Why?" Dean and Elizabeth asked in stereo.

"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two." He held up several. "Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?"

Dean protectively snatched the Metallica tape from his brother.

"It's the greatest hits of mullet rock." Sam finished.

"Well, house rules, Sammy." Dean snatched another tape out of the box. "Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake hole."

"And back seat makes snide comments." Elizabeth said, clearly reviving over her iced tea.

"Back seat also shuts her cake hole." Dean added, popping the tape into the player. He started the engine and _Back in Black_ poured out of the speakers.

"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old." Sam pointed out patiently. "It's 'Sam', okay?"

"Sorry, I can't hear you. The music's too loud." Dean said. He deliberately upped the volume another notch and stepped on the gas.

* * *

><p>ACDC was their soundtrack as the Impala roared down the last seven miles to Jericho. Sam was on the phone, trying to ignore the oddest feeling that he had finally come home after a very long trip.

"Thank you." He ended the call. "All right. So, there's no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue. So that's something, I guess."

"Didn't think there'd be." Elizabeth said. She was leaning on the back of the front seat. "He thought it would just be a salt-'n'-burn. Never heard of those things killing a Hunter."

"Unless something else caught him off guard." Sam muttered uncharitably.

Dean glanced over at his brother like he wanted to say something vaguely scathing, but his attention was drawn to the bridge ahead of them. There were two police cars barricading it from the road and several officers milling around in that professional way.

"Check it out."

His siblings leaned forward for a better look. Dean stepped on the brakes and pulled onto the shoulder. He peered at the scene again with an evaluating expression and then killed the engine. He leaned across Sam and opened the glove compartment. Stared. Blinked. Turned to Elizabeth.

"You organized the glove compartment?"

"I don't have to justify myself to you." Elizabeth said with a touch of haughtiness. "Yours are in the middle. Mine are on the right. Sam, could you hand me the 'Cherilyn Sarkisian' Federal Marshall?"

They were fake I.D.s, Sam realized. Three neat stacks sitting forefront in the glove compartment. He rifled through Elizabeth's stack until he found the one she had requested.

"Cherilyn Sarkisian?" he questioned.

"Cher." Elizabeth plucked the I.D. from his hand. "As in 'Sonny and'."

Sam looked over at his brother, clinging to the thin strand of hope that Dean had figured out what it was to be a good role model. But Dean had already selected a fake I.D. and he grinned indulgently.

"Let's go."

The Winchesters marched up the bridge like they owned it. Well, Dean and Elizabeth were doing so. Dean's stride said: "I am so awesome and you are all going to stare whether you want to or not, because I am just that awesome." All haughty and confident. Elizabeth's stride said something more along the lines of: "You are going to stare or else I'll put your balls back in your scrotum." More self-assured and assertive. Sam was hanging back a few paces, trying to put his game face back together.

"You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" Dean called when they were in hailing range.

The deputy straightened up and cast an eye of suspicion on the newcomers. Plainclothes. They looked like civilians. What were civilians doing here?

"And who are you?" Deputy Jaffe asked.

"Federal marshals." Dean flashed his badge. Beside him, Elizabeth did the same.

"You guys are a little young and pretty for marshals, aren't you?" the deputy said, his tone lightly condescending and his gaze lingering on Elizabeth. Figures. Always under-estimating the girls.

But Dean laughed it off. "Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." he said. "You _did_ have another one just like this, correct?"

"Yeah, that's right." Jaffe replied. Dean, it seemed, had passed the deputy's test. "About a mile up the road. There've been others before that."

"So, this victim, you knew him?" Sam asked.

Jaffe nodded. "Town like this, everybody knows everybody."

Both Dean and Elizabeth were circling the car in a well-practiced maneuver, eyes scouring the vehicle for any signs that would clue them to the reason its driver had disappeared.

"Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, any angry ex-girlfriends?" Elizabeth asked, kneeling down to check the underside of the car, in case any angry ex-girlfriends had been a happy slasher on the brake lines.

"No. Not so far as we can tell." Jaffe replied, not so much as looking at the blonde woman.

"So what's the theory?" Sam wondered, walking over to Dean and Elizabeth.

"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?" Jaffe shrugged. He had been at a loss to explain this and that wasn't good because people were demanding answers he didn't have.

"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys." Dean said. His tone sounded complimentary, but there was the underlying 'you're all stupid, blind fuckers.'

Sam stomped on his brother's foot, making no effort to conceal it. Dean winced.

"Thank you for your time." the younger brother said pleasantly. He nodded at Deputy Hein, who was inside the vehicle. "Gentlemen."

The three walked away with Jaffe's untrusting eyes burning holes in the back of their heads. When they were close to the end of the bridge, Dean whacked Sam across the back the head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Why'd you have to step on my foot?"

"Why do you have to talk to the police like that?"

Elizabeth took two big strides forward and set herself in Sam's path, forcing him to stop.

"Look, Sam. They don't really know what's going on. It's just the three of us in this." she said. "If we're going to find Dad, we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves."

"You're just saying that because the deputy didn't even look at you." Sam said accusingly.

"Apparently because I have a pair of tits." Elizabeth said flippantly; she tried not to be bothered by the gender inequality she often faced. She poked a finger at Sam's chest. "Rule number something. Leave law enforcement out of what we do."

Sam cleared his thought pointedly, staring over Elizabeth's shoulder. She turned. The Jericho sheriff and two FBI agents were standing there, close enough to have overheard everything.

"Can I help you?" the sheriff asked politely.

"No, sir, we were just leaving." Dean said, taking the lead.

The sheriff didn't look entirely convinced, but he let it go, touching the brim of his hat to Elizabeth. The FBI agents walked past them.

"Agent Mulder." Dean nodded to the first FBI agent, then the second. "Agent Scully."

Sam rolled his eyes, his features settling into what his siblings referred to as his 'bitchface'. Bad role model and rude to law enforcement. That was Dean wrapped up in a nutshell that smelled like bacon cheeseburgers and peanut M&Ms.

But then it was Elizabeth who decided to take the cake. She looked at the sheriff and said: "Cigarette-smoking man." Then she saluted him (it was the most mocking thing Sam had seen in a while) and three Winchesters left the bridge.

* * *

><p>-0-<p> 


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** I also have a another Supernatural story up if you're interested in something completely different.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

* * *

><p><span>Three's Family<span>

"Y'know, you're just going to wreck that on the next hunt."

"Gee Sammy, your confidence in my ability to keep a phone for more than a week is astounding. Anyways, it's not like I have to get a new phone after _every_ hunt. I only go through five or six a year. It's not my fault that the motherfuckers are inexplicably attracted to my phone."

"Still doesn't change the fact that you go through five or six a year."

"Yes, but it's not actually my fault."

"Yeah-_-_"

"God, Sammy. Leave it alone." Dean instructed, knowing that Sam and John shared the same opinion of Elizabeth and cell phones: stop buying them if you insist on wrecking them.

Sam fell silent on the matter and Elizabeth continued to fill out her contacts list in peace. She was smart enough to keep a little black book of phone numbers, so she didn't have to recreate the list entirely from memory.

Downtown Jericho had a subdued atmosphere. The recent missing people had everyone looking over their shoulders and taking precautions. The marquee on the movie theater informed everyone of an emergency town hall meeting at 8pm on Sunday and encouraged everyone to be safe. But more importantly, beneath the marquee, a young woman was tacking up missing posters of Troy Squire, the most recent victim.

"I'll bet you that's her." Dean said, already starting across the street.

"Yeah." Sam nodded. "Liz!"

"Hold your horses." Elizabeth finished entering the number and darted after her brothers.

The Winchesters walked up to the young woman. Up close, it was easy to see that her hair was dyed and she was wearing a bit too much eyeliner and the color black. A teenage rebel, of sorts.

"'Scuse me, you Amy Hein?" Elizabeth asked, getting ahead of her brothers.

"Yeah." Amy said hesitantly. She looked the blonde woman up and down, then with some trepidation at Sam and Dean who loomed on either side of their sister like bodyguards. "Who are you?"

"I'm Elizabeth. These are my brothers, Sam and Dean. And don't worry. They're friendlier than they look." Elizabeth added with a good-natured laugh. In response, Dean switched on the charming smile. Sam was a little slower on the uptake, but he set about making himself look harmless.

Amy didn't seem entirely set at ease, though it was Dean she kept sizing up.

"Yeah, Troy told us about you." Dean said, turning the charm up. Elizabeth had established contact, but Dean felt it was his job to keep Amy from running off. "We're his uncles. And aunt."

"He never mentioned you to me." Amy said, still giving the siblings the hairy eyeball. They saw her shifting her weight to leave before she actually started moving. The three Winchesters swooped around her like satellites even as she tried to walk off. It was rather like watching a wolf pack intercept a deer.

"Well, that's Troy, I guess." Dean said laughingly, trying to offset the obvious hunting behavior they had fallen into without thought. "We're not around much. We're up in Modesto."

"So, ah-_-_ we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around." Sam started. He didn't finish because another girl swooped in out of nowhere a laid a hand on Amy's arm in a gesture of solidarity. Her style of dress was similar to Amy's; lots of black.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, referring to more than just Amy's current emotional state. The newcomer wanted to know if these strangers were bothering her.

"Yeah." Amy nodded again. No, they weren't bothering her. Not really.

Sam took the opening while he still had it.

"You mind if we ask you a couple questions?"

* * *

><p>The other girl's name was Rachel and she was a bit more chatty than Amy. She dominated conversation in the five minutes it took for the small group to relocate to the nearby diner. Rachel insisted on taking a booth, which meant the Winchesters had to squeeze into one side. That was okay. They had squeezed into much smaller spaces, but this was a tight fit and while Elizabeth was small width-wise, the Winchester brothers were big boys. When Rachel shut up long enough to sip at her soda, Dean prompted Amy into talking.<p>

"I was on the phone with Troy." she was saying. "He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did."

"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?" Sam asked gently. He had fallen right back into the groove of extracting information out of suspects without making it seem like he was fishing for information. All gentle tones and understanding sympathy.

Amy shook her head. "No. Nothing I can remember."

At the end of the bench, Elizabeth shifted to keep her ass from going numb and tried to shove Dean over a little further so she wasn't half out of the seat. Dean didn't move, just because he didn't have to. Also, he couldn't. He was squished in. Maybe they should have insisted on a table.

"I like your necklace." Sam said, gesturing to the pentagram pendant hanging around the girl's neck.

"Troy gave it to me." Amy said, reflexively grasping the gift. She must have missed Troy very much. "Mostly to scare my parents with all that devil stuff."

"Actually, it means just the opposite." Sam corrected. "A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing."

"Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries." Dean took his arm off the back of the seat, trying not to elbow Elizabeth in the ribs. "Here's the deal, ladies." the Hunter went on, leaning forward in a business-like manner. "The way Troy disappeared -_-_ something's not right. So if you've heard anything..."

Amy and Rachel shared knowing looks.

"What is it?" Elizabeth prompted.

"Well, it's just..." Rachel cleared her throat. "I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk."

"What do they talk about?" all three Winchesters asked in stereo.

"It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago." Rachel explained. Sam nodded attentively. "Well, supposedly she's still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever."

* * *

><p>Zero results.<p>

Dean's eyebrow twitched, aggravated.

"Try 'Centennial Highway'." Elizabeth suggested, glancing up from an old _People_ magazine she had nicked.

Dean backspaced over "hitchhiking" and replaced it with his sister's suggestion, then clicked 'search'. "Female Murder Centennial Highway" also got zero results.

"Let me try." Sam reached for the mouse. Dean smacked his hand away.

"I got it."

Impatiently (because if they left Dean at it, they would be here forever), Sam shoved his brother out of the way and slid in front of the computer screen.

"Dude!" Dean landed on a punch on his brother's shoulder, more out of annoyance than malice. "You're such a control freak."

"His Google-fu is better than yours, grasshopper." Elizabeth said, attempting a sage, old master tone.

"Better than yours, Godzilla." Dean retorted.

Elizabeth shrugged and put the magazine down. "But Dad never got mad at me for being unable to run a decent Google search."

"So," Sam cleared his throat pointedly before another round of 'Who's the Better Older Sibling?' got underway. "Angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?"

"We know that. What's your point?" Elizabeth asked.

"Well, maybe it's not murder."

Sam replaced 'murder' with 'suicide' and smiled triumphantly at Dean (who scowled) when a single result appeared. It was for the Jericho Herald. Headlined "Suicide on Centennial" and dated twenty-four years earlier. Sam scanned the article, looking for the relevant information.

"This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river."

"She's been dead as long as I've been alive." Elizabeth commented, leaning over Sam's shoulder. "Does it say why she did it?"

"Yeah." Sam nodded. "An hour before they found her, she calls 9-1-1. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die."

"Hmm..." went Dean.

"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch." Sam read from the caption beneath a picture of a heartbroken man.

Dean leaned in a little closer and pointed to the neighboring picture; the bridge where Constance had jumped from.

"That bridge look familiar to you?"

* * *

><p>As per the Winchester way, they waited until almost midnight to check out Sylvania Bridge, when it was late enough that they would be mistaken for little more than thrill-seekers (at best. At worst, a threesome). The Impala parked at the edge of the bridge, the three Winchesters walked along, leaning over the railing to look down at the river.<p>

Dean let out a whistle. "So this is where Constance took the swan dive."

"How deep do you think the water is?" Elizabeth wondered. "I mean, do you think it's deep enough to kill someone when they hit it or would they get knocked unconscious, then drown?" She leaned a little further over the railing with a thoughtful expression. "I hear drowning's a less painful way to go. She could have just walked into the river and lay down instead. Didn't have to jump."

Both her brothers hardly glanced at her. Elizabeth always mused about the way suiciders could have done it better.

"So you think Dad would have been here?" Sam asked, shooting a look at his older brother.

"Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him." Dean replied. He continued walking down the length of the bridge, his eyes automatically scanning for anything out of the ordinary.

"Okay, so now what?" Sam wanted to know.

"Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while."

Sam stopped mid-stride, his halt like completing an electric circuit. Elizabeth jumped back from the railing like she had been burned and marched over quick-like to do her duty as the middle child. Defusing the bomb that was the youngest and the oldest.

"Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by Monday." Sam reminded him.

"Monday. Right. The interview." Dean said the word "interview" the same way a God-fearing-I-don't-talk-about-human-reproduction man might have said "sex". Like the word was a curse and should not be uttered in pleasant company.

"Yeah, I forgot." Dean shook his head. Forgetting was exactly what he had been hoping to do. Figures that Sam had to remind him. "You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"

"Maybe. Why not?" Sam asked rhetorically. Why _not_ marry Jess? Why _not_ become a big-shot lawyer? Why? Because he could. Because that option was open to him.

"Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?" Dean interrogated.

"No, and she's not ever going to know." Sam said. There was no reason for Jess to ever know.

Dean and Elizabeth shared a look.

"Well, that's healthy." Elizabeth deadpanned, arms crossed. "Very-_-_ Very psychologically sound. Good coping method. As Bobby would say, you're an idjit."

Dean nodded in agreement. "You can pretend all you want, Sammy, but sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are."

"And who's that?"

"One of us."

"No. I'm not like you." Sam said defiantly, stepping in front of Dean. "This is not going to be my life."

"You have a responsibility to-_-_" the older Hunter started.

"To Dad? And his crusade?" Sam shook his head. "If it weren't for pictures, I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back."

He wasn't prepared for both his older siblings to come at him. Elizabeth all but body-slammed him, disgust written into her features, and then spun away on her heel, shoulders hunched. Dean grabbed his little brother's shirt collar and shoved him against the railing. There was a long silence.

"Don't talk about her like that." Dean warned, his voice edging dangerously close to a threatening tone.

He released Sam and moved away. Sam straightened his collar, hardly able to believe them. He understood his brother's stance. Of the three of them, Dean alone remembered their mother with any real clarity. He remembered that _"Hey Jude"_ was their bedtime lullaby. He remembered that she would heat up milk and sprinkle cinnamon on it when they had trouble sleeping.

Elizabeth barely any clear memories. She remembered _"Hey Jude"_, but her auditory memories were better than her visual memories. She could recall wavy blonde hair and green eyes but she swore to this day that those features really belonged to Dean.

Sam didn't know a thing outside of what his family told him.

"Guys." Elizabeth spoke up suddenly and pointed to the other side of the bridge.

The ghost of Constance Welch stood on the railing, dark hair and tattered white dress rippling in a nonexistent breeze. Then she stepped off the bridge and dropped out of sight. The siblings darted after her as if they could catch her, clustering at the railing and looking at the dark water below.

"Where'd she go?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know."

A familiar rumble growled into the air and the Impala's headlights illuminated the length of the bridge. The Winchesters turned to look.

"What the..." Dean started in a tone that suggested he was going to have to choke a bitch for touching his car.

"Who's driving the car?" Elizabeth asked with trepidation.

It was well-founded because Dean pulled the keys out of his pocket and pointedly jingled them. His younger siblings had enough time to see this before the Impala jerked into motion and roared down the bridge.

"Go! Go!" Dean instructed.

The Winchesters were all fleet-footed with the stamina of any career long-distance runner, but in a case of Man Vs. Car, the car usually won. The possessed Impala closed the gap swiftly, practically nipping at their heels. They had nowhere to go but over the side of the bridge.

* * *

><p>-0-<p> 


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Since the question was asked, I'll answer it here too.

Dean is 26, DOB: January 24, 1979.

Elizabeth is 24, DOB: March 15, 1981.

Sam is 22, DOB: May 2, 1983.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

* * *

><p><span>Three's Family<span>

The Impala idled alongside the railing for a moment as it were thinking. Then it shut off, the absence of its engine loud in the sudden silence. Sam waited another few seconds before moving, re-adjusting his grip and pulling himself into a more secure position.

He had caught himself on the underside of the bridge, but it seemed that he had been the only one with the presence of mind to do that. His siblings were nowhere in sight. His gaze immediately shot down to the river, his mind picking the worst time to recall Elizabeth's musings on Constance Welch's exact cause of death.

"Dean? Elizabeth?" His heart pounded in his throat as he watched the rushing water. "Guys!"

Before he could shout again, two dark figures broke the surface, gasping for air. They whipped their heads around a moment, checking on each other, before wading for the muddy shore.

"Hey!"

"What?" came Dean's annoyed, ragged voice. "You shoutin', Sammy? Can't hear shit..." he growled, poking a finger in one ear as he staggered up the bank.

Elizabeth threw a poorly-aimed kick at the back of his calf. "Don't do that. You'll just drive it further in." she said, pulling at her sopping jacket in a half-hearted manner.

"Hey! You guys all right?" Sam asked.

Dean tossed up an A-OK sign.

"We're peachy." Elizabeth grumbled. "Muddy, but peachy."

Sam laughed in relief and set about trying to pull himself back onto the bridge proper.

It took the Winchesters some five minutes to collect themselves. Elizabeth and Dean had to find their way back up to the road and no one trimmed the undergrowth this far out of town. Sam heard distant complaints about poison ivy and snakes and a squawk of surprise that suggested they had disturbed something small and furry. Eventually, they emerged from the trees and marched back onto the bridge where Sam was waiting.

"Damn..." Elizabeth grumbled, holding up her sopping, brand-new and undoubtedly ruined cell phone. "If I'd known I'd be diving into rivers tonight, I would have waited 'til tomorrow to buy a new one. Think I could get a refund? Blame it on acts of God?"

"I doubt a possessed car is an act of God, little sister." Dean said, popping the Impala's hood to inspect the machinery. "'Specially not when some _bitch_ messes with my car!"

"So, what do you suppose killed Constance Welch?" Sam asked his sister, a tad snide.

Elizabeth gave her little brother a dirty look and hesitantly pulled the clip out of her hair, leaning back so the collected mud and water splattered straight to the pavement rather down her back.

"I'd say she sank into the mud at the bottom. Thick, gooey stuff that could swallow a person whole." she said. "If she pitched in headfirst and knocked herself out on impact, then she drowned. If she stayed conscious, then she got stuck in the mud and still drowned."

"So either way, she drowned." Sam concluded.

Elizabeth fixed him with a momentary examining look, then said: "Yeah, pretty much."

"Your powers of deduction are amazing, Sherlock." Dean said dryly. He finished his inspection of the Impala and shut the hood. "And so uplifting when I'm trying to eat breakfast and you're talking about mutilated corpses."

"Fine. I missed my calling as a forensic pathologist." Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Car's alright?"

"Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now." Dean replied. "That Constance chick, _what a bitch_!" he shouted in challenge.

"Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure." Sam commented. He flopped on the hood beside his brother. "So where does the job go from here?"

Dean just threw up his arms in frustration, unable to give an answer. He looked at the mud dripping from his jacket and gave his hands a quick flick to clean them off. That was when Sam finally smelled it. A sour, rotten, truly unsavory smile that burned his nose-hairs. A quick, exploratory sniff in either siblings' direction confirmed it.

"You both smell like a toilet."

Elizabeth flicked mud at him.

* * *

><p>It was morning by the time Elizabeth and Dean dried out well enough for Dean to consider climbing back in the Impala. No one was going to be smearing nasty-smelling mud all over the inside of his baby on his watch. So they stayed on the bridge, played I Spy, tested Sam's reflexes at odd moments and the two eldest Winchesters sparred.<p>

Sam always found it interesting to watch his brother and sister spar. When it was John and Dean, John and Sam, or Sam and Dean, it was no question that the match-up was even in terms of strength. Sam had been doing PT and learning hand-to-hand well before he had ever found out about Hunting, so he had always been a formidable opponent. Now even more so with his increased height.

But when it was Elizabeth versus anyone, she always looked grossly outmatched. Whereas her brothers had filled out their muscles, she had only filled out her curves. She had a dancer's musculature; lean, wiry muscles like coiled springs. She would never be as physically strong as her brothers; Winchester women had a history of being lightweight. So John had trained her more for speed, rather than strength. She could more than hold her own against the men of her family.

Certainly, Dean lost the match.

Jericho had its crappy motel of Hunter caliber and it was past breakfast when the Winchesters pulled in. Dean slapped Hector Aframian's credit card down on the hand-written guest ledger.

"One room, please."

The clerk picked up the card, examined it for a second and then looked up at the trio. Dean and Elizabeth had dried out, but they were still filthy, clouds of dust seeming to come off with their every movement. Sam hovered just behind them, half-hoping not to be associated with them.

"You guys having a reunion or something?" the clerk asked in the confused tone of one who thought he'd missed something.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"I had another guy, Burt Aframian." the clerk replied. "He came and bought out a room for the whole month."

The three siblings shared a look.

Rather than come across as suspicious by trying to wheedle the room number out of the clerk, they went to look for it themselves. After a lifetime of living in motel rooms, they knew what their father's preferences were. Something on the end, or close to it, out of sight of the office. He always put up the 'Do not disturb' sign. They found a likely looking door that fit the criteria and picked the lock. When the door opened far enough to reveal the salt line at the threshold, they knew their instincts were bang on.

Elizabeth secreted the lock-pick back into her pocket and ventured into the room with Sam on her heels, Dean out playing look-out on the walkway. Sam reached back out of the room to grab Dean by the shoulder and yanked him in, closing the door. The motel room was mess. Definitely lived-in. Maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, and notes were all pinned to the walls; John's usual method of organizing his information. The desk was buried in books, some open, others closed. Assorted junk and trash littered the floor and the bed-_-_ Was that a hazardous-materials symbol?

"Whoa." Sam breathed. Being out for four years meant that his memories of the motel rooms were faded, but he did remember that they were clean-_-_ well, _cleaner_ than this.

"So this is what happens when I'm not around." Elizabeth commented. She eyed the overflowing trash bin in a manner that suggested that she wanted nothing more than to divert a river through the room.

Dean turned on the lamp by the bed and gingerly picked up the half-eaten hamburger sitting on the nightstand while Sam waded through the salt lines that appeared to have been randomly placed and Elizabeth peered over some of their father's scribbled notes. Dean sniffed the burger carefully and got a nose-full of turned mayonnaise and decaying meat. He couldn't recoil fast enough.

"I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least." he announced.

Sam was kneeling on the floor, fingering the salt.

"Salt, cats-eye shells... He was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in." he said, now a little worried himself. When something unnerved the mighty John Winchester, the time to panic wasn't far off. He looked up to see Dean checking out the wall of pictures. "What have you got here?"

"Centennial Highway victims." Dean replied.

"Mark-_-_ Somebody -_-_ Dad's handwriting is awful. William Durrell, Scott Nifong and... someone Parks." Elizabeth read off. "I see skin color wasn't an issue either."

"Exactly. I don't get it." Dean shrugged. "I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?"

While Dean mulled hard over possible connections, throwing out possibilities only to have Elizabeth shoot most of them down, Sam took a look at what was taped to the other wall. John had been thorough in research -_-_ he always had been. There were notes on the Bell Witch (odd, as they were almost two thousand miles from the source of the Bell Witch legend), pictures of women being burned at the stake, a sketch of the Mortis Danse, a column comparing devils and demons, and another about sirens, witches and the possessed. John had been working from a witch angle.

Sam flicked on another lamp, illuminating the corner that contained a notation reading "Woman in White". It was pinned above a printout of the Jericho Herald article on Constance's suicide.

"Dad figured it out." Sam realized.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, turning in tandem with his sister.

"He found the same article we did." Sam explained. "Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."

Dean looked back at the photo of Constance's victims, knowing exactly what that entailed.

"You sly dogs." he said, nodding almost in approval.

"Right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it." Elizabeth said, checking the wall again.

"She might have another weakness." Sam pointed out.

"Well, Dad would want to make sure. He'd dig her up." Dean said, crossing the maze of salt lines to see John's notes on the matter. "Does it say where she's buried?"

"No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband." Sam tapped a picture of Joseph Welch. "If he's still alive."

"Well, why don't you two get started on finding an address." Elizabeth suggested. "I got first dibs on the shower!"

"Hey!"

Dean spun around to assert his first-shower privileges as the oldest, but his sister slipped right ahead of him and shut the bathroom door. All Dean could do was claw ineffectually at it. She opened it a second later and poked her head out.

"Sorry Dean, but if you want me to live up to that whole 'sexy Winchesters' thing, I need actual hot water to clean the gunk out of my hair." she said cheekily. "Although if you want to make yourself useful, you can get me my bag out of the trunk."

"I'll get your bag..." Dean grumbled and the rest of it trailed off into indistinct threats.

"Thanks, Big Brother." Elizabeth flashed a beatific smile and closed the door again.

Dean shook his head at the closed door and started for the exit.

"Hey, Dean?"

Sam's voice stopped him halfway there.

"What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry-_-_"

Dean held up a hand.

"No chick-flick moments." he warned.

Sam laughed. "All right." he nodded. "Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam laughed again, taking comfort in the familiar exchange. Dean disappeared out the door to retrieve the bags (he needed clean clothes too). Sam's smile faded and he turned to the large vanity mirror behind him. A rosary dangled in front of it. Wedged into the frame was yellowed family photograph. John was sitting on the hood of the Impala. To his right was a young Dean who couldn't have been more than ten years old. Elizabeth was crouched on the ground, practically sitting on John's feet, her hair stuffed under a knit cap. Sam's photographic self was perched on their father's lap.

Sam could hardly remember this picture being taken. It would have been more significant if he'd known that this picture was the last picture they would take as a family. The rest of their life was chronicled by the candid shots from Elizabeth and her disposable cameras. He took the photo off the mirror and gently tucked it into his pocket.

* * *

><p>An hour later, Dean was in the shower and Elizabeth had buggered out to replace her cell phone. Sam paced the length of the room, his phone pressed to his ear, listening to his voicemail.<p>

"_Hey, it's me, it's about ten-twenty-_-" Jess's voice was saying.

Dean clattered out of the bathroom, freshly clean. He grabbed his leather jacket and shrugged it halfway on.

"Hey, where's Elizabeth?" he asked.

"She took the car. Said she was going to berate the sales-boy about inferior quality cell phones." Sam replied.

"That's my girl."

No, Dean **had** figured out what it was to be a good role model. He just didn't care.

"Man, I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?" Dean asked.

"No."

"Aframian's buying."

Dean waggled the credit card invitingly, but Sam shook his head, still trying to listen to the voicemail.

Well, if Sam wanted to starve, then Sam could starve. Dean wasn't going to force him to eat. That never went down well. He left the motel room and started across the parking lot. The diner wasn't far away, a brisk five-minute walk if he was any judge. But he had to make it across the parking lot first and goddammit, there was a police car parked by the office. The clerk was talking to Jaffe and Hein, the deputies from yesterday morning. When Dean glanced over, the clerk pointed directly at him.

_Shit._ The Hunter turned away and pulled out his cell phone.

Back inside the room, Sam had sat down, listening to the last of Jess's message.

"_So come home soon, okay? I love you._"

The phone beeped with an incoming call. Sam pulled it back, saw Dean's name on the screen and accepted the call.

"What?"

"_Dude, five-oh. Take off._" Dean warned.

Sam sprang off the bed. Ah, no hunt was complete without trouble from the authorities.

"What about you?"

Back outside, the deputies were practically on top of Dean.

"Uh, they kinda spotted me. Get Liz. Go find Dad."

He hung up and turned around, giving the deputies his best innocent grin.

"Problem, officers?" he asked.

"Where are your partners?" Jaffe inquired casually. He had that look, though: _'We're onto you, sonny.'_

"Partners?" Dean repeated in fake bewilderment. "What-_-_ what partners?"

Jaffe was plainly in no mood to deal with kids playing dumb. He jerked a thumb towards the motel room and Hein jumped to it. Dean accidentally fidgeted, knowing that would send up a red flag, but all the same, Sam had better be slipping his bony ass out the bathroom right the fuck now.

"So," Jaffe regarded Dean with the satisfaction of one who knew they had just done a good deed for the day. "Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?"

Unfortunately, Dean had never really learned when to stop being a smart-ass.

"My boobs." he grinned.

Hein returned in time to slam Dean over the hood of the nearest car, having found nothing but an empty motel room. Jaffe started wrestling the handcuffs on.

"You have the right to remain silent-_-_"

* * *

><p>-0-<p> 


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Yay for missing scenes. I'm a little fond of this chapter, mostly for the middle section.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

* * *

><p><span>Three's Family<span>

No doubt Dean would not exercise his right to remain silent. He had this odd speech disorder where he mouthed off incessantly to anyone who tried to assert their dominance over him, from cops to witches with superiority complexes.

But he would never, ever say _anything_ that would endanger his family. Deny, deny, deny. That was the Winchester Way.

Sam had managed to escape out the bathroom window with some creative contortions and a new kink in his spine. He had darted several blocks up the road and had looked over his shoulder in time to see Dean being loaded into the back of a police car. He appeared to be going quietly, but that was Dean. He let you think you had him right where you wanted him, but the moment you turned your back, you would find out that you didn't have him at all.

When the police pulled away from the motel at last, Sam emerged from his hiding place and reflexively checked his phone, cursing when it informed him that there had been no activity since Dean's last call. Elizabeth had the Impala and she had to be at least halfway across town. Sam had the vague beginnings of a plan, but he needed the car and his sister to pull it off.

He found his mind whirring back into the proper gear for Hunting. He had taken the back seat for most of this, letting his older siblings lead the charge. He was the college boy. Hunting was their territory.

But Dean was going to be preoccupied for the next several hours and there was still a ghost to take care of and Dad was still _missing_, but first things first. Get Elizabeth. That was what Dean had told him to do. Get Elizabeth.

His phone twittered with an incoming text message. He checked.

Elizabeth had just texted him her new phone number.

He quickly dialed it.

"_Yeah?_"

"It's me. The cops caught up to us. Dean got arrested." Sam said without preamble.

"_Damn. Where are you?_"

"Gas station a couple blocks up the road."

"_Right. Be there in five._"

Sam sat down on the curb to wait and took the time to start crystallizing his vague plan into something more solid. He needed something or else Elizabeth was just going to shoot it down.

Not five minutes later, he heard the throaty growl of the Impala before he saw it. He stood up and dusted himself off as the black classic rolled up to where he was waiting.

"First things first." he said as Elizabeth pulled back onto the road. "We need to find out if Joseph Welch is still alive. He was only thirty at the time, so he'd be fifty-four now."

"Wait, he was thirty when Constance took the swan dive?" Elizabeth frowned. "Constance was twenty-four when she died. Her oldest kid was six and Joseph was twenty-four when they married."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Sam wondered.

Elizabeth shrugged. "Constance was married at eighteen. I betcha that kid was a honeymoon baby."

"So?"

"So, Sam, they didn't get to have any fun with that marriage before they had screaming, pooping, little wad of human flesh to raise and turn into a productive member of society. On top of that, Constance was eighteen. Fresh out of high school. Marriage was probably arranged. Joseph probably felt like he was marrying a little girl. No wonder he cheated."

Sam frowned. "We don't know for sure that he did."

"Hello Sammy! Constance is a _woman in white_!" Elizabeth said. "Joseph Welch is a cheating bastard!"

"Y'know, there are a lot of reasons that husbands are unfaithful." Sam pointed out patiently.

"I know that." Elizabeth's eye roll was impatient and rather Dean-like. "But we know that Joseph cheated on her. Constance would not be a woman in white otherwise."

"Alright." Sam held up his hands, not wanting to pursue the line of thought any further. They would just end up in a pointless, circular argument and he didn't want to start fighting with someone he hadn't seen in two years.

Elizabeth let out a slow sigh.

"But you're right. We need to find out if Joseph is still alive." she said. "Constance wasn't buried in a conventional cemetery. He'd be the only person who'd know where she is. And now we've got the police on the look-out for us, so I think conning our way into county offices is out of the question."

"We should check the library first." Sam suggested. "Small town like this, they might keep death records there. Otherwise, I can trying hacking the town database."

"Alright, you go electronic. I'll go paper."

* * *

><p>Sam managed to work his way into the county records and into the ones for Jericho, but the one of the librarians had taken a strong interest in what he was doing. He'd hit 'print' and closed the window before she could get a good look. That still left them with the task of finding Joseph Welch's name amid all the others, so he and Elizabeth had divided up the work and hid in the back of the reference section, away from any nosey librarians.<p>

"Think she's hot for you, Sammy." Elizabeth commented with a sly smile.

"You are so much like Dean sometimes, it scares me." Sam stated flatly.

"I had four years of undiluted Dean-time. You'd start thinking a little like him too after that long." Elizabeth got a faraway look in her eye that suggested she was peering cautiously down memory lane.

"So now you drink a lot of beer, hustle pool and go home with strange men?" Sam asked. Elizabeth did all those things anyways, but he had never known her to indulge in excess.

"I pick pockets too." Elizabeth reminded him, pretending to be hurt that he had forgotten that.

Sam shook his head, but smiled. It was like the severity of the Winchester vices had declined with each sibling. Dean drank himself into a stupor and took home the first hot woman who would have him. Elizabeth set herself at a five-drink limit (on good days) and was extremely picky about the guys she might spend a night with (for starters, she wasn't going to sleep with anyone who looked like her brothers). Sam would only have one drink if cajoled (for him, two beers and it was karaoke time) and he **never** took a woman back to the room. There was nothing like growing up with a relentless skirt-chaser to really put you off the idea of taking your conquests home.

Papers rustled in silence for a little bit. As dedicated as he normally was to research, Sam found his mind wandering and it tripped over a persistent question more than once. Finally, he decided to ask it.

"Hey, Liz?"

"Hmm..."

"Did you ever consider -_-_ getting out of this life?" Sam asked.

Elizabeth raised her head. "You mean stop being a Hunter?"

"Yeah."

He was a little surprised that Elizabeth didn't get angry with him, and supposed that he was too used to Dean's reaction. Dean was firmly convinced that there was nothing for him beyond the Hunting life and he got a little pissed when anyone suggested otherwise.

"You remember that summer I took off?" Elizabeth questioned. "It back in 2000, after I graduated. After the Hunt in St. Joseph, Louisiana."

"Yeah, you called us from Key West."

Sam remembered Elizabeth leaving -_-_ or at least waking up the next morning to find out that she had left in the middle of the night. The St. Joseph's Hunt had been something of a head-fuck, as she had put it, and it had rattled her badly. She had disappeared and they'd heard nothing from her until late August, calling to say that she was ready to come back.

"That was me trying to ditch the Hunting life." Elizabeth admitted. "I was ready to do it. I had my high school diploma, there was a community college, I had a job, I was gonna sign up for spring classes and everything. And then I looked at my crappy little waitress job and tried to imagine myself doing it for the long-term and uh... I couldn't do it. Freaked out." She shook her head in a fond way. "You've got more guts than I did."

"D'you think you could?" Sam inquired curiously. "I mean, if you had another shot?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "I think that was a moment of panic for me. Did I look like I was thinking straight the night I took off?"

Certainly not. She had looked rattled, ill at ease, scared stiff of even setting foot in the motel room that night. That Hunt had gotten to her and in a bad way.

"So you really don't blame me for leaving." Sam said.

"Well, I wasn't there for the epic smack-down, remember?" Elizabeth prompted.

Sam remembered. Just him, Dad, and Dean that night. They had been in the middle of a Hunt and Elizabeth had been out doing... something. He couldn't remember what and it hadn't been terribly important at the time.

"Dean and Dad weren't talking about it. Hell, Dean wasn't talking at all and Dad just-_-_ whooshed out."

"He left?"

"Nine times outta ten, me and Dean were on our own. Honestly, I was more pissed at Dad than you." Elizabeth brushed her fingers through some loose strands of hair. "I gotta say, Sammy, it felt like he had chased you off. I was mad at him because he handled the situation some frikkin' three-year old who didn't have his favorite toy and he sorta forced Dean into this self-imposed silence... I can't blame you for leaving. Not when I almost did the same thing."

Sam nodded. "Why'd you come back?"

Elizabeth's expression changed slowly into a frown and she returned to perusing the list of names without a word. Sam pressed his lips together briefly. Call him crazy, but he didn't believe that his sister had returned to Hunting of her own accord. She had called and told them that she was ready to come back. Sam had long ago acquired a suspicion that someone (read: Dad) had twisted her arm.

A short while later, Elizabeth let out a hiss of triumph.

"Found him. He's on Winthrop Street."

"Alive?"

"As they come. Let's go."

* * *

><p>Though only in his mid-fifties, Joseph Welch was clearly a man who had fallen to pieces in the last twenty years. He had not aged well or gracefully. His skin had gone tanned and leathery, he had lost most of his hair and a considerable belly hung over his belt. He wore a ball cap, worn flannel and old jeans.<p>

He looked like a poor man's version of Bobby Singer.

"Yeah, he was older, but that's him." Joseph said, handing back the family photograph Sam had taken from the motel room, as they ambled down the cluttered driveway.

"He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."

"That's right." Sam nodded. "We're working on a story together."

"Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on." Joseph said, his aged face wrinkling in a frown. "The questions he asked me?"

"About your wife Constance." Elizabeth said, searching for confirmation.

"He asked me where she was buried." Joseph said this with a look of disgust, as if John had really asked him if he didn't mind a total stranger digging up his wife's grave and setting fire to her bones.

"And could you tell us where that was again?" Elizabeth asked, trying her best to look sensitive and understanding.

Joseph wasn't in much of a mood for sensitive or understanding.

"What, I gotta go through this twice?" he asked.

"It's fact-checking, if you don't mind." Sam put in.

"In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge."

"And why did you move?"

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died."

The Winchesters came to a halt and so did Joseph, because Sam was right in his intended path.

"Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?" Sam asked.

"No way." Joseph shook his head. "Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

"So you had a happy marriage?"

Joseph took a second too long to answer.

"Definitely."

Over the man's shoulder, Elizabeth canted a knowing eyebrow.

"Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time." Sam said, nodding in thanks. Elizabeth shook hands with the man and let him walk away. The Winchesters returned to the Impala. Elizabeth caught her brother's eye across the roof and mouthed: _Cheater._

Sam deliberately pulled away from the Impala and back towards Joseph.

"Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?" he called out.

"A what?" Joseph stopped just for the sheer oddness of the question.

"A woman in white. Or sometimes 'weeping woman'?" Sam pressed. Elizabeth was making some sort of hissing noise behind him. "It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really. Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places; in Hawaii, Mexico, lately Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women, you understand. But all share the same story."

"Boy, I don't care much for nonsense." Joseph growled. Reporters his ass! He was calling the cops. He started heading back to the house.

"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them." Sam went on, his words stopping the man dead in his tracks. "And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children. Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."

"You think...you think that has something to do with... Constance?" Joseph asked, his voice wavering. "You smartass!"

"You tell me." Sam said.

"I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance-_-_ she never would have killed her own children! Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!" Joseph ordered.

He was shaking, but from anger or grief, it was impossible to tell. After a long moment, he turned away and marched back up to the house. Sam sighed. And Elizabeth's hand met forcefully with the back of his head.

"Ow!"

* * *

><p>-0-<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** And here we are in the home stretch. The penultimate chapter. Just one more to go after this!

This story was a little more popular than I initially thought it was going to be. So my question is: Would you like to see more of Elizabeth Winchester? Should I go on and write her into more episodes?

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

* * *

><p><span>Three's Family<span>

"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo."

Dean knew exactly what the "35-111" meant.

Didn't mean he had to tell the sheriff, though.

"We gonna do this all night long?" Sheriff Pierce asked in a tired sort of way. They had been at this all afternoon; it was getting late and he wanted to go home, but work was work.

Dean just smirked inwardly. Sheriff wasn't going to catch him. He was a master liar even on his worst days, but this? This was a good day. This was a good day and Dean was rock-solid.

No matter how deeply the sight of his father's journal had rattled him.

The sheriff was just gathering himself for round whatever when a deputy leaned into the room and said: "We just got a 9-1-1; shots fired over at Whiteford Road."

"You have to go to the bathroom?" Sheriff Pierce asked, as the deputy rushed away.

Dean stared for a second or two (what the hell kind of question was that?) before responding: "No."

"Good."

_Oh c'mon!_ Dean thought after the sheriff handcuffed him to the table. He rattled the cuffs and glared up at the man. There was probably something in their employment contract that required police to look smug when they just got one over on a prisoner. Sheriff Pierce was certainly letting a smug something creep into his smile and he put on his coat and hat and hurried out the door, closing it.

Dean slumped in his seat, annoyed that he'd been caught off guard like that. He didn't have the time to sit around and wait for the sheriff to come back. His gut told him those shots fired on Whiteford Road had never happened. That was his distraction so he-_-_

Paperclip.

A paperclip poking out from between the pages of Dad's journal. Dean plucked it from its resting spot and regarded it for a moment.

Perfect.

The police were so busy getting out the door that they didn't notice their prisoner was free of his cuffs and waiting for them to leave. And they were well gone by the time Dean was shimmying down the fire escape outside, having absconded with his dad's journal and a gun that had been so carelessly left laying around, making his way to the nearest phone.

As previously stated, Dean Winchester only let you think you had him right where you wanted him. But it was when you turned your back that you discovered you hadn't gotten him at all.

* * *

><p>Centennial Highway was dark and the heat of the day had settled into a fine mist. Elizabeth had muttered something about Dean and jails before hoping that Sam's plan was going to work. It was simple, but there were still things that could trip it up. Maybe it wouldn't keep the police occupied long enough or Dean just wasn't in any position to make his great escape.<p>

Sam's phone flashed with an unknown number. He answered it.

"_Fake 9-1-1? Whose idea was that?_"

"That was mine." Sam said. Oh god, why did he sound proud about it?

"_Ooh, Sammy, I dunno know, that's pretty illegal._" Dean sounded proud too.

Sam grinned despite himself. "You're welcome."

"_Listen, we gotta talk._"

"Tell me about it. So the husband _was_ unfaithful-_-_"

"Sam didn't believe me!" Elizabeth chimed in from the driver's seat. "I told him but he had to go and piss the dude off to confirm it!"

"We are dealing with a woman in white." Sam went on, dutifully ignoring his sister. "And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop.

"_Sammy, would you shut up for a second?_"

"I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet."

"_Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho._"

"Dad left Jericho?" Sam repeated. Elizabeth's eyes darted off the road for a second and there was an instant where all three siblings felt a stab of betrayal. Their father had worried them; no word for three weeks; sent them looking for him - and didn't tell them that he had left in the middle of a job.

"How do you know?" Elizabeth asked, her voice raised to be heard. Sam pulled the phone away from his ear to switch it over to speaker.

"-_-ot his journal._" was Dean's reply, suddenly loud.

"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing." Sam muttered, sharing a worried look with his sister.

"_Yeah, well, he did this time._" Dean said grumpily, which was really just a disguise for the fact he was worried too.

"What's it say?" Elizabeth asked.

"_Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going._"

"Coordinates." Elizabeth nodded. "Where to?"

"_I'm not sure yet._"

"I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job?" Sam complained. "Dean, what the hell is going on?"

"Sam!"

Elizabeth hit the brakes so hard that the tires squealed and Sam dropped his phone. Constance had appeared dead in the middle of the lane. The Impala blew right through her ghostly form, making it disappear, and the car screeched to a halt. The lack of an impact was almost jarring. From the foot-well, Dean was shouting down the line, alternating between Sam and Elizabeth's names, trying to get a response from either of them. But they weren't replying because they were too busy staring at the rearview mirror. Constance had reappeared in the back seat.

"Take me home." she whined piteously. "Take me home!" she demanded again when nothing happened.

"Go fuck yourself." Elizabeth hissed.

Pissing off already angry spirits was never a good idea. Constance glared and the door locks glued themselves down. The two Winchesters immediately struggled to reopen them, but Constance was a powerful spirit to boot. She held the locks down and drove the car down the road, never mind that her unwilling passengers were wrestling with the doors, trying to open them.

The Impala was steered down Centennial and over Sylvania Bridge where the road turned into Breckenridge. It wound along for a few minutes, the trees giving way to pasture-land and rotting fence posts. A derelict house appeared around the next bend. The Impala was guided up to the front porch where it stopped. The engines and the headlights shut off.

"Don't do this." Sam requested of the woman in white.

Constance flickered.

"I can never go home." she said sadly.

"You're scared to go home." Sam realized.

"Sam, I'm breaking the glass." Elizabeth informed him, wriggling in the seat to get at the gun she had stowed in the waistband of her jeans. Before she could she vanished, her yelp of surprise swallowed up by an angry howl. Sam thought he saw movement outside the car, but Constance reappeared in the driver's seat. She climbed into Sam's lap, shoving him against the seat so hard the back of it reclined.

"Hold me. I'm so cold." the ghost whined, cuddling up to Sam's chest. She was cold. So freakin' cold Sam wondered if it was possible to get frostbite on the inside.

"You can't kill me. I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!" he said fiercely, trying to struggle away from the subzero temperatures.

"You will be." Constance promised -_-_ that bitch. "Just hold me."

She kissed him hard -_-_ oh god! Frostbite on lips! Sam lunged for the keys, still hanging in the ignition. He fell short of them, but it broke the searingly cold and altogether wrong kiss. Constance seemed to rear back like a snake, her face twisting in disapproval and disappoint. Her form flickered and Sam caught a glimpse of something horrible and beastly lurking underneath that pretty facade just before she disappeared.

But she wasn't gone. She wasn't gone. It was still horribly cold-_-_

"Aaargh!"

Sam yanked at his hoodie, practically tearing it open. There five holes being burned into the fabric of his shirt, into his skin. The pain slowly burrowed deeper into his flesh, centimeter by agonzing centimeter. Constance's fingers, he realized when the ghost flickered back into existence over him. Her hand was pushing into his chest, reaching for his heart.

A gunshot shattered the window and startled Constance, making her retract her fingers. Elizabeth had returned from wherever the ghost had dumped her and Dean was on her heels. They were both firing, sharp reports of each gun echoing through the air. Constance flinched with every other shot, her body flickering out of sight for the briefest of seconds. The hailstorm of bullets didn't let up. She pinned Sam with another glare and vanished a third time.

She still wasn't gone. Sam only had a few seconds to act. He heaved himself upright and into the driver's seat, swinging one leg into the foot-well. He twisted the ignition.

"I'm taking you home."

He stomped on the gas, sending the Impala careening up the front porch and through the wall. Twenty-four years of neglect had taken its toll. The old classic smashed through the side of the house like it was nothing and crunched over the living room floor before Sam could put his foot on the brake.

Out in the yard, Elizabeth nodded in approval.

"That'll do it."

"He'd better be alright so I can kill him!" Dean growled.

He rushed forward through the jagged hole in the wall, his sister on his heels. Dean picked his way over the wreckage to the passenger side of the car. Elizabeth came up from the other side.

"Sam!" Dean leaned down to peer through the window. His little brother was still clenching the steering wheel tight. There was nothing in his posture or breathing to indicate that he was in great amounts of pain, but it was dark. Dean didn't know for certain.

"Sam! You okay?"

"I think..." Sam groaned. He rolled his head to the side, where he could see a dark form moving about. It was blurred by the condensation on the back window. "Liz?..."

"Peachy." she replied, a small groan in her voice. "I never want to do that again. Ghost express sucks."

"Can you move?" Dean asked his brother.

"Yeah." Sam nodded. "Help me?"

He knew he sounded a tad pathetic, but he felt strangely boxed in. Dean leaned through the shattered window to pull the lock. Sam struggled out of the driver's seat, suddenly feeling very sore and tired. All he wanted to do was go home and have a hot shower and curl up in bed to sleep before his interview. Actually, part of him just wanted to fall asleep right there, but Dean was grabbing handfuls of Sam's hoodie and trying to yank him out. Sam had no choice but to wiggle his way out. He staggered when his feet hit the floor, but Dean steadied him.

"There you go."

Dean closed the door. Gun pointed at the ground, but ready, Elizabeth came around to the passenger's side of the car, putting her back against her older brother's side. Dean recognized that she was still tense, still waiting for an attack. She never liked it when the ghosts went quiet.

Across the room, Constance was holding a large picture frame. She and the Winchesters noticed each other at the same time. The ghost angrily threw the picture down and she sent a heavy bureau scooting straight towards them, slamming them into the side of the car and pinning them there (Dean scrabbled to take the gun from his sister's hands). But that was all she had time to do. Lights that must have burnt out years ago suddenly hummed to life, lighting the living room with a faded bronze glow. Constance looked around, her expression scared.

It started as just a trickle, but then there was water pouring down the staircase, stopping abruptly at the bottom step. There was still enough human left in Constance to be curious, as scared as she appeared. She ventured over to the staircase. Standing at the top were two children, a boy and a girl. They were both soaked wet, shivering from fear and cold. The two children linked hands.

"You've come home to us, Mommy." they chorused in soft, eerie voices.

Constance looked at them, distraught, and it seemed for a moment that she might run. But then her kids were behind her and they wrapped their arms around her in a mockery of an embrace. The spirit wailed and thrashed, but the combined power of the children was too much. In a surge of energy that bent and twisted all three ghosts in horrific forms, Constance and her children melted into a puddle on the floor, and vanished for the final time.

The force pinning the Winchesters to the car was gone as well and they shoved the bureau over, groaning. Rubbing his legs, Dean staggered over to the large puddle at the base of the stairs.

"So this is where she drowned her kids." he said.

Sam nodded. "That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them."

"You found her weak spot. Good job, Sammy." Elizabeth complimented. She delivered a manly slap to his chest, right where Constance had dug her fingers in. Sam managed to laugh instead of scream.

"Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you." he said. "What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freaks?"

"Hey. We saved your ass." Dean said, waving a hand. He leaned over to look at the Impala. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car, I'll kill you."

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><p>-0-<p> 


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** Well, it's been an interesting ride. I think Elizabeth grew on me. I'm a little fond of her now. If you'd like to see more episodes rewritten to include her, please say so. I'd probably write it anyways, but there'd be no point in posting the stories if no one is going to read them.

The song Elizabeth is singing to taunt Sam here at the beginning is "Tempted" by Squeeze.

**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural_ is the brainchild on Eric Kripke. I also don't own the lines of dialogue I swiped directly from the episode transcript.

* * *

><p><span>Three's Family<span>

"_-_-alarmed by the seduction, I wish that it would stop-_-_"

"Elizabeth, shut up."

"Tempted by the fruit of another! Tempted but the truth is discovered-_-_"

"Elizabeth."

"What's been going on, now that you have gone... There's no other! Tempted by the fruit of another-_-_"

"Shut up!" Sam snapped, whacking his sister with the ruler.

"Ack!" Elizabeth waved her hands to fend off the blows. "Dean, help! I'm being attacked by a Sasquatch!"

Behind the wheel, Dean just cackled in good humor.

One headlight was out, but the Impala had survived her foray through the side of a house. She was a tough old thing. Took a lickin', kept on tickin'. She was the vehicle version of a Timex.

"If you insist on annoying me, then make yourself useful and hold the flashlight." Sam requested.

"Sure, because I'm your older sister and I love you dearly." Elizabeth said a touch sarcastically. She acquiesced to his request and positioned the flashlight above his head so it illuminated the map.

Dean tried not to cackle again, but he allowed himself an enormous smile. Sure, they hadn't found Dad in Jericho, so what? Sam was riding shotgun and Elizabeth was camped out in the back seat. For the first time in four years, the seating arrangements were back to the way he was used to. For the first time in four years, Dean had both of his siblings in arm's reach.

"Hey, you know what bothers me?" Elizabeth started. "We haven't heard from Dad in three weeks, but he only took off a couple of days ago."

"And?" Dean prompted.

"Well, he said he would pick me up after a week." she reminded him. "Dad splits us up on three separate hunts, two of them half a continent apart and initiates a communications black-out as soon as he drops me off in San Francisco, a _stone's throw_ away from Palo Alto and Stanford and Sam... It makes me wonder if he knew something and that Jericho business was just a cover."

"What, you think Dad was lying to us or something?" Dean asked.

Elizabeth shrugged. "It's not like he hasn't before. Besides, once he figured out it was a woman in white, it would just be a salt-'n'-burn, but he practically left it for us to finish. The question is: Why?"

Dean shrugged in lieu of an actual answer. He had learned not to question their father's orders. Dad always knew what he was doing. It was just easier to go along with it.

"Okay, here's where Dad went." Sam had finished triangulating the coordinates. "It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado."

Dean nodded. "Sounds charming. How far?"

"About six hundred miles." Sam estimated.

"Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning." Dean suggested.

It wouldn't take a sighted man to see what the older Hunter was really suggesting. In the matters of his family, Dean was as transparent as they came. That was an invitation. He wanted Sam to come with them; to splat the apple pie and screw the rules and come back to life on the edge. He didn't want to wait another four years for them to work together again. For all he knew, in another four years, Sam would be settled with a family and there would be no chance of ever getting him back out there. He wanted three people in the Impala again, to make it feel full again.

Sam knew it too.

"Dean, I, um..."

"You're not going." Dean interrupted. He didn't look at his brother.

"The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there." Sam said, his eyes begging, pleading with Dean to understand that this was important to him. He glanced at Elizabeth, but her eyes darted away. Still trying to stay out of the middle.

"Yeah. Yeah, whatever." Dean nodded, his tone disappointed and conceding. "I'll take you home."

Elizabeth turned the flashlight off, hiding the hurt feelings in the darkness.

* * *

><p>They pulled up in front of the apartment building not long after eleven o'clock. Dean was still frowning as Sam got out. Sam shut the door gently and leaned towards the window.<p>

"Call me if you find him?" he requested.

Dean nodded.

"And maybe I can meet up with you guys later, huh?" Sam tentatively poked out an olive branch.

"Yeah, all right." Dean said.

"You're buying." Elizabeth told him.

Sam smiled and patted the car door twice before turning away. Dean seemed to struggle with indecision for split-second, then leaned over the empty passenger seat.

"Sam?"

Sam looked over his shoulder.

"You know, we made a hell of a team back there." Dean said, returning the olive branch.

Sam smiled. "Yeah." He extended a hand to the rear window, palm flat. "Take care of him, Lizard."

"Take care of yourself, Sasquatch." Elizabeth gently slapped her palm on her brother's and they executed a loose handshake.

Farewell complete, Dean drove off. Sam watched the red tail-lights until they turned a corner at the end of the street and disappeared. He let go of a sigh and headed for the door. He was home now.

Back down the road, Elizabeth leaned on the back of the bench seat with her chin resting on her folded arms, grimacing as a weird pit started to form in her stomach. Dean glanced at her slightly constipated expression.

"You okay?" he asked, concerned.

Elizabeth shook her head even as she replied. "I feel like we shouldn't have left him so soon. I dunno, Dean. Maybe we should stick around for another day. Just one more day. See how things go."

"What brought this on?" Dean wondered. Just a minute ago, she had been fine with the idea of leaving Sam behind.

"You know that feeling you get when you see an accident waiting to happen? That sick anticipation that makes your skin crawl? I've got that feeling right now." She rolled her head to the left and paused.

"Fuck, I think my watch died. It's not ticking..." she mumbled in a tired way.

Dean glanced down at the clock on the radio (it read 11:27) and then at his own watch. The hands didn't seem to be moving. He held it up to his ear. It wasn't ticking either. His watch and Elizabeth's watch stopping at the same time? That was not a coincidence. That was definitely not a coincidence!

He ripped the Impala though a U-turn that threw Elizabeth into the foot-well and gunned it back the way they had come.

"What the fuck, Dean!" Elizabeth fought her way back upright. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You're right! We shouldn't have left Sam so soon!" Dean replied. _C'mon, baby! Faster!_

Elizabeth blinked. "Whaddya mean?"

"It's here." Dean growled.

They returned to Sam's apartment building in record time, but it hadn't been fast enough. There was brilliant orange and yellow light flickering inside, flames already breaking through the roof.

"Holy fu-" Elizabeth started in terrified awe.

"Stay in the car!" Dean bolted out the door. "Stay in the car! I mean it!"

Normally, Elizabeth would have balked at the order (she hadn't been ordered to stay in the car in a long time), but there was so much raw fear in her brother's voice that she hunkered down behind the front seat until all that could be seen of her was everything from the eyes up and her white knuckles.

Knowing that she would stay there, Dean sprinted up the walkway without another glance and burst through the door. The stairs were no obstacle; he was up them in a heartbeat. Terror and adrenaline lent him amazing strength and he kicked down the apartment door like it was nothing. The main room wasn't on fire, but a blast of heat hit him nonetheless. He could hear Sam screaming Jess's name, in fear, in desperation. In agony.

"Sam!"

Down the hall, the bedroom was on fire. Dean didn't display any regard for his own safety and burst into the flaming room. The heat was amazing. He hadn't felt anything like this since-_-_ since Lawrence, Kansas. The bedroom ceiling was engulfed, the fire crawling down the walls, burning white-hot at the core.

The most terrifying thing, however, was Sam. He was flat on the bed shielding his face with one arm but his eyes were locked on the ceiling.

"Sam!"

Dean grabbed his brother, hauling him off the bed. Sam wouldn't look away from the ceiling. Dean looked up.

Jess was up there. Blood seeped through her white night-dress. Tongues of flame licked at her skin, turning it red-raw and bubbly. She was dying, perhaps already dead. The same way Mary Winchester had died.

"No!" Sam screamed, trying to fight out of Dean's impossibly strong grip. "No!"

Six-foot-four and weighing in over two hundred some odd pounds, Sam was no match for a determined older brother. Dean shoved him bodily out the door. Even as the ceiling started to give, Sam still fought and struggled desperately. Even as the life he had spent four years building burnt up right before his eyes.

"Jess! _Jess_! _No_!"

* * *

><p>On November 2nd, John Winchester's life had fallen to pieces, burning up in the flames of something he didn't understand. All he knew was that something had murdered his wife, because that fire had been unnatural. The manner of her death had been nothing short of unnatural.<p>

Desperate for answers, grieving, John had picked up what remained of his life -_-_ his three children, and packed them away into the Impala. Everything had been restructured that night. He had stopped being concerned about the trivial matters that plagued daily life. Normal life. Life had ceased to be normal the instant he saw Mary bleeding on the ceiling. Normal life didn't occur to him, until almost two years later when it was mentioned to him that he oughta put Dean in school.

Winchesters just weren't meant for a normal life. John knew his family history was plagued with unusual deaths, half-insane aunts and missing relatives. All stories that had been passed down from his grandfather, who had loved to talk about the "family curse".

So if the Winchesters couldn't live a normal life, then their job was to ensure that everyone else could.

Because if a Winchester tried for a normal life, it eventually went up in flames. Just like now.

Or that was how Dean was seeing now, anyways.

He had tried to console himself, tell himself that Sam probably couldn't have pulled it off in the long run. Trying to hide a decade's worth of secrets from someone who was supposed to know you intimately. Jess would wonder why Sam's family never called, never came around. Why Sam would refuse to establish contact. Why Sam bought so much salt and taught his kids self-defense. Why he over-analyzed every single accident on the news and in the paper. Too many secrets that couldn't be passed off as personality quirks.

It wouldn't have worked.

That was what Dean kept telling himself even as he stood beside his blank-faced brother and watched the firemen race to put the flames out.

It was hours before the fire was doused. The building had been evacuated, no injuries, only one fatality. One whole half of the building had been consumed. Gawkers of all ages gathered along the sidewalks with the police patrolling a perimeter so they wouldn't get too close. The crowd of humanity seethed with ill-disguised curiosity and once, Dean had heard someone wonder: "Isn't that Sam Winchester's building?"

Sam had heard it too. He'd snapped out of his funk and wandered off, presumably to go hide in the Impala.

Things were dying down now. The police would come nosing around soon with questions and Dean wanted to be out of here before then. Give Sam a few hours reprieve before-_-_ before everything else.

Dean strode back to the Impala, now parked a block away. Elizabeth was sitting on the hood, her heels caught on the bumper. Her hands were fisted tightly around each other -_-_ Dean imagined that they would be shaking otherwise. She caught her older brother's eye and inclined her head to the rear of the car. Sam was standing behind the open trunk, loading a shotgun. His face was a mask of desperate anger, his jaw stiff and his eyes focused on the task. It looked as though he would break into tears at the slightest provocation. Dean was cautious as he joined Sam at the trunk. Of all things he'd dealt with tonight, he didn't want to add a sobbing baby brother to the list.

Sam finished loading the shotgun. He sighed, a slow, controlled exhale, and tossed the gun into the trunk.

"We got work to do."

* * *

><p><em>Finite<em>


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